The People's Record

Labrador;
2010

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There are some things about Club 8 records that are always the same. The line-up, for one thing-- Johan Angergård is the composer, and Karolina Komstedt is the singer. Her voice is always polite and gentle; his songs are consistently tuneful in the low-key way that characterizes contemporary Scandinavian indie pop. Within this template, the duo have gone through a surprising number of stylistic shifts-- at various time slipping comfortably into trip-hop, twee, bossanova, dub, and dance-pop. Their experimentation has yielded hit-or-miss results, but their willingness to explore and ability to change up their formula without sacrificing the band's essential character is commendable.

The People's Record, the duo's seventh full-length, is their boldest work to date. Whereas previous Club 8 releases had toyed with danceable beats, Angergård's new songs are built upon dense polyrhythms that borrow extensively from Western African, Brazilian, and Afro-Cuban music. Thanks in large part to the group's nimble rhythm section, these sounds have been integrated into their established Euro-indie aesthetic with nuance and grace. The emphasis on rhythm seems natural, and the songs seem to be constructed from the bottom up rather than arbitrarily tossed into these beat-heavy arrangements.

Club 8 have never sounded deeper, darker, or funkier. Komstedt's voice is still thin and wispy, but her melodies are given more bounce when contrasted with the festive, lively percussion of "Western Hospitality" and "Isn't That Great?" "Dancing With the Mentally Ill", the album's highlight, is haunting and groovy and somehow manages to echo late-70s Fleetwood Mac as much as twitchy post-punk and West African funk. When the songs settle into mellower grooves, the music bears a superficial-- though flattering!-- resemblance to Taken by Trees' album from last year, on which Victoria Bergsman's soft, heavily accented voice was paired with Pakistani rhythms and instrumentation.

Though The People's Record contains some of the best music of Club 8's career, it doesn't hold up well as a complete album. There are no outright duds, but the sequence is front-loaded to such a degree that there is an obvious drop-off in quality by the middle of the set. From there on out, it's a case of the same ideas executed with less inspiration and weaker hooks. Komstedt's voice, though sweet and pleasant, has a way of seeming disengaged and characterless without the benefit of compelling melodies, which drags down mediocre cuts such as "Like Me" and "We're All Going to Die". At 10 songs and just about 37 minutes, the album is not overlong, though only about half of that running time accounts for top-shelf material. It's a fine record to cherry-pick, but something of a chore to sit through in its entirety.